Today marks not only the end of September, but of the third quarter of 2020, as well as the beginning of the year’s final quarter. Looking back at the market’s performance in both the last month and the last three months we find both strong rallies and crashes.
July, as we noted in detail, was a good month for crypto, to put it simply. The market went swiftly upwards, and the entire month ended in the positive color of green. Bitcoin (BTC) jumped to USD 11,000, touching USD 12,000 at the very beginning of August. But altcoins followed closely, with ethereum (ETH) nearing USD 400, and others going up as much as 50%, including XRP, cardano (ADA), and bitcoin SV (BSV). elrond (ERD) was the overall winner in the top 50 coins by market capitalization category, with aave (LEND) in the second place.
August went a bit south. It wasn’t a bad month for crypto, but it was certainly a mixed bag. The cause of the turbulence partly lay in the fast rise in popularity of certain decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, as yield farming became all the rage already in July. Some coins saw great gains, others went in the opposite direction. Bitcoin hit a yearly high, followed by a downward correction, while ethereum surpassed USD 450. On the other hand, the prices of the majority of the top 10 coins went down in August. Chainlink (LINK) was the winner among the top 10, having gone up by more than 90%, and REN won the top 50.
And finally, September. It saw the continuation of the DeFi craze, with new projects entering the market. Meanwhile, Coin Metrics found that the 7-day average adjusted transfer value of ETH surpassed that of BTC for the first time since 2018, while a Santiment report stated that ethereum whales almost doubled their holdings in a month – and all this time, the total value locked in DeFi continued to rise.
Top 10 Coins in September & Q3
Only one single coin ended the month of September in green. Binance coin (BNB)‘s price increased nearly 25%. Binance has been regularly pushing out updates, such as announcing the attempt to bridge DeFi and centralized finance (CeFi) via a new support fund. Meanwhile, token data and rating agency TokenInsight found that BNB was an undervalued exchange token.
In the past 30 days, all other coins in the top 10 (not counting stablecoin tether (USDT)) have gone down – with bitcoin’s 7% on the lower end, and past winner chainlink’s 36% on the higher end of that spectrum. (As reported, September is historically the worst month of the year for the price of BTC, with an average return of -7%). Despite the DeFi boom, ethereum dropped more than 18%, which is the third-highest drop, behind polkadot (DOT) in the second spot. DOT went through a 1:100 split in August that also saw all token balances increase by 100x, keeping the value of all token holdings the same as before the split – following which, it entered the top 10 list by market capitalization.
On the other hand, in the past quarter, this list looks the exact opposite. Only one coin is down, that being polkadot, with a substantial fall of 97%. Chainlink won the quarter, having gone up more than 110%, while BNB follows it with a 88% increase. Ethereum is in the third spot with a 60% increase in its price, while the rest traveled upwards between 3% and 38%. Bitcoin is somewhere in the middle, having gone up nearly 19%.
Top winners in September
Confirming the fact that September saw a lot redder crypto picture than the previous two months is that we don’t have the full list of 10 green coins in the top 50 category. Only eight of them saw increases in their respective prices. Celsius (CEL) leads this list, going up more than three times than the second-placed THETA‘s 50%. The rest rose less than 40%, while LEO token (LEO) sits in the last spot, with an increase of less than 1%.
Top losers in September
There are quite a few top 50 coins that finished the last month in red, and the top 10 worst performers all have relatively large drops. UMA is first on the list with a 60% fall, followed by the much-discussed compound (COMP) and its nearly 50% fall. The following six coins dropped between 30% and 36%, among which are a few already mentioned projects, while the smallest drops were seen by ontology (ONT) and aave – around 29% each.
Top 10 winners in Q3
Unlike the September winners, there are plenty to choose from in the Q3 category. Although it’s not visible in the screenshot from Coinpaprika below, yearn.finance (YFI) is the absolute leader in Q3, as it jumped by almost 3,000% in three months, trading at around USD 24,000 today, after it dropped by 27% in the past month. Meanwhile, aave and theta, increased 271% and 235%, respectively. OmiseGo (OMG), NEM, celsius, and chainlink all went up more than 100% in three months. The last three on the list have done quite well too, with NEO and synthetix network token (SNX) having seen rises of more than 90%. These are followed by BNB in the 10th place.
Top losers in Q3
Here too, we find quite different colors compared to September alone. There are only five red coins to talk about, these being polkadot, hedgetrade (HEDG), ethereum classic (ETC), tezos (XTZ), and basic attention token (BAT), respectively. There is, however, quite a gap between the first and the second-placed coins, as the former is close to a 100% drop, and the latter to a 20% one. And further, another gap was formed between HEDG on the one side, and ETC’s and XTZ’s drops of less than 4%. Meanwhile, BAT fell less than 1%. It’s also worth mentioning that ETC suffered three 51% attacks in August.
Winners & losers from top 100 in September & Q3
Among the top 100 coins by market capitalization, during the past month, celsius came at the top again. ABBC coin (ABBC) follows it, with an increase of nearly 137%. The remaining green coins saw double-digit rises of 50% and less, while OKB sits in the 10th winning spot with 7.7%.
In the past three months, however, following YFI, band protocol (BAND) took the second place, with a 524% rise, followed by ocean protocol (OCEAN)‘s 385%. Three following coins are up by more than 200%, while four others boast rises of above 160%.
As for the worst performers in September, UMA is at the top, followed by coins with 50%-56% drops, including avalanche (AVAX), aragon (ANT), and REN. The remaining four coins also had relatively large drops of 40%-49%, with solana (SOL) dropping the least overall.
The past quarter has polkadot as the worst performer, followed by kyber network (KNC) and midas touch gold (TMTG) in the distant second and third places. The remainder of the list recorded falls smaller than 25%, with augur (REP) in the last place, seeing its price fall almost 14%.
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